The Courage To Kill by Ron Argo

NOW COMES VENGEANCE FOR A CHILDHOOD OF UNSPEAKABLE EVIL.
A killer on the loose. A father murdered. A young girl molested….As folks from all walks of life–priests by the dozens, Boy Scout leaders, coaches, school teacher–are finally outed and paying for their sexually
abusive crimes, there still lurks the unseen molestation of children in the bedrooms of their homes. What of those young victims?

THE COURAGE TO KILL is a psychological mystery whose theme of the questionable psychological treatments for real-life childhood sexual abuse has created the most reviled and revered controversy to impact the mental health profession since Freud.

THE COURAGE TO KILL is available from Amazon.

 *****

“The quality of a classic.” — Ken Kuhlken, author of THE LOUD ADIOS and THE BIGGEST LIAR IN LOS ANGELES

Janice Parrish shot her father execution-style, as he pleaded on his knees. That’s what the DA is saying, wanting Murder One.

But did she do it? Janice cannot remember holding a gun, feeling the recoil, smelling the cordite.

At age 26 Janice cannot keep friends. She’s frigid, she’s rebellious, she drinks too much. An up-and-coming real estate agent, she’s losing clients. Finally one night, drunk and angry, Janice breaks into a bookstore, vandalizing it. She’s caught. It’s a crime for which she can either go to jail or to counseling. It’s with the counselor, pop-psych analyst Patricia Zech, that her nightmare begins. A year later her father is killed.

Zech determines all the “signs” are there of Janice having been sexually abused in childhood. But why couldn’t Janice remember any of it?

San Diego crime reporter Ray Myers has more than a gut feeling this story will do him in. But it will be Myers alone who must find the truth–before more murders take place.

 *****

Ron Argo was born in Alabama about the time of WWII. He graduated from the University of Georgia in 1968 with a degree in Journalism, and soon after got drafted into the army and because of his degree lucked into reporting instead of humping in Vietnam. Then after seven years as a newspaper reporter, he returned to university and received his M.A. from San Diego State University in 1980, then went for his MFA at Arizona…. And on it goes, publishing YEAR OF THE MONKEY, a Vietnam novel praised as one of the most important novels of that war (S&S, 1989), and other novels to be presented at ITW site directly.